Last year, my sister and I spent multiple Fridays creating a "Time Machine" scrapbook for my mom's birthday. We ended up creating a pretty hefty book. It started when she was young. It included her childhood, wedding, kids, pets, and more kids. Her brother and sister wrote a short "memory" for her and they each had a page. It was a great idea and a great gift to give. Mainly because it was literally made from the sweat of our brow. Every time I went to my mom's I flipped through every page admiring our work. I think my sister is a million times better at scrapbooking then I am. She takes more time on each page. Either way, my mom loved it and it was a great hit! I've never put forth that much effort on a gift EVER. So after that huge project, I retired scrapbooking for a little while. Like 7 months. But it's that time of year again (Mother's Day and Birthdays are quickly coming). So I pulled out the tote, trays, crates, and bins of scrapbook supplies.
The project this year: Her mother's recipes that were just sitting in a box. I organized them and the work has begun.
This is just one page of Croissants. It's actually really hard to arrange recipes.
Some are hand written and some came from a newspaper. One dates back to the late 60's. It's pretty neat to see the old advertisements and coupons.
If the recipe continued on the back of another I just color copied it. That's why the second card is white.
The work has begun. This is what I will consume my life with for the next month or so. I've made a pretty good dent already!
Sorry mom, it's not a surprise anymore! You knew I had them anyway.
7 comments:
I don't know what your talking about, because your pages are always much better than mine. Hands down better. As a matter of fact, I've been staring at your first two recipe two pages in admiration for about 5 minutes now. I too, have taken an extended break after that 60 page-year-long-creation but it's good to see your back at it.
What a great idea. And SO much work, your mom will definitely appreciate it!
Wow! I am so impressed. I would love to do something like that for my mom. No ideas yet since her birthday is at the end of this month. I can't wait to see the final product.
SO creative! That would be a great idea for my mom's birthday or any other gift for her. You are so awesome!
Don't do cute things like that. It makes me feel like I need to do cute things...!
OH OH OH!!! I am so overwhelmed again!!! For all of you who have no idea what it felt like to receive this wonderful "Time Machine" that Emily and Mandy worked so hard on to put together....I cried!
(Now I know that Mandy will say that I cry at just about everything that they do for me...but let me tell you something, the work and the beauty and the thoughtfulness of putting this together was AWESOME!
I have never and I mean NEVER had a birthday and a gift that was as good as this one!
I can't imagine any mom anywhere not loving the gift and all that went into making it!!
This recipe scrapbook will really be a treasure because my mother didn't have a typewriter and there were no computer programs back then. She wrote everything by hand and clipped recipes from the Chicago Tribune to try when she had a "little more money" (for the ingredients). She loved chopped suey and we often had meatloaf, pot roasts, pork chops and of course her famous "Polish" spaghetti (which Aunt Patsy has the recipe for just in case you want it...tee hee).
Mom loved to bake and I can't remember very many days when she didn't have all THREE cookie jars filled to the brim with Oatmeal raisin cookies WITHOUT nuts. She loved baking cookies and an occasional cake or two. But when it came to cakes or breads she liked banana nut bread (with walnuts, sorry Em but you can leave them out and it tastes just as good).
Many of her recipes were taken from Campbells soup cans! The back of the Creamettes Macaroni box (or the side panel, I forget now). She loved to make Tuna Casserole (it was one of my dad's favorites and during the summer when the garden was filled with all the tomatoes and cucumbers she would make a HUGE garden salad and serve it with Ritz crackers. The cucumbers were sliced thin with a few onions and covered with vinegar to soak overnight. Then she drained the vinegar and added sour cream. This was one of the BEST fresh from the garden meals I have ever enjoyed. (Of course it was from my mom and that made it 100 times better then from a bag of salad purchased from Smith Food King)
I can't wait to see the collection of recipes that you've chosen. So many are so timeless and the advertisements of what food cost in the 50's 60's and even the 70's would make you laugh!
I'm sure that this will be yet another wonderful gift and I can't wait to see it!
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